On 24 August 1991, during the course of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian parliament declared the existence of an independent Ukrainian state. The declaration was confirmed in a referendum on 1 December 1991 by 90.3 percent of the population. The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted from Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and from the 1989 revolutions in satellite states of the Soviet Union such as Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. In the longer perspective, the collapse of the Soviet empire was caused by such dissident movements as Solidarność in Poland, Charta 77 in Czechoslovakia, and the Shistdesiatnyky and Rukh in Ukraine. The contribution to the dissolution of the Soviet Union of far-right émigré organizations such as the OUN, LAF, Ustaša, Iron Guard, and Hlinka’s Party—many of which were united during the Cold War in Stets’ko’s ABN—was marginal. Nevertheless, the OUN and UPA returned to Ukraine in the late 1980s as anti-Soviet icons. The fallen OUN activists and UPA partisans were promoted by nationalist dissidents and right-wing politicians as a resistance movement and as the last postwar fighters against the “red devil.” Their collaboration with Nazi Germany, their antisemitic and fascist ideology, and their involvement in the Holocaust and other forms of mass violence during and after the Second World War were completely forgotten.
The Bandera cult reappeared in western Ukraine, in particular in the former eastern Galicia, a few years before the official declaration of independence. It adapted to the new cultural, social, and political circumstances and has persisted until the time of writing. Except for the Ukrainian diaspora, the cult was limited to western Ukraine, with the main core in eastern Galicia, but far-right groups in central and eastern Ukrainian villages, towns, and cities began organizing and worshiping the Providnyk as a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism and as a martyr who died for Ukraine. In addition to politicians and radical right activists, nationalist historians also played an important role in improving, modernizing, and propagating the cult. On the one hand, their writings legitimized the agendas of far-right activists, and on the other, they blurred the difference between history and politics.
The revival of the Bandera cult in post-Soviet Ukraine demonstrated that the cult of a fascist or authoritarian leader is not a relic or an isolated phenomenon, typical only of German neo-Nazis, Italian neo-Fascists, or other far-right groups propagating racism and hatred. It can actually enchant and confuse a large part of a society, including even the most critical, reasonable, and rational intellectuals. The Bandera cult in post-Soviet Ukraine took many more varied forms than it had in the diaspora during the Cold War. In post-Soviet Ukraine, the cult was popularized by politics, historiography, museums, novels, movies, monuments, street names, political events, music festivals, pubs, food, stamps, talk shows, and other means. In order to grasp the nature of the Bandera cult there, we will analyze and explore several of its forms with the help of thick description, and will try to uncover the motives and agendas of its creators and propagators.
From 1989 to 1991, the citizens of western Ukraine were, on the one hand, exposed to established Soviet propaganda, and on the other, to reemerging Ukrainian nationalist propaganda. Soviet propaganda tried to discredit the OUN and the UPA until the very end of the existence of the Soviet Union. In the late 1980s, more articles on the Ukrainian nationalists began to appear in the Soviet Ukrainian press. Such articles generally extolled the heroism of Soviet activists and reminded their readers of the villainous side of the OUN-UPA. As in the past, they depicted the OUN activists and UPA partisans as traitors, enemies of the Ukrainian people, or “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists.” At the same time, new monuments to the Soviet heroes murdered by the OUN-UPA were erected. On 14 February 1988 for example, a monument devoted to Feodor Ulianov was unveiled in the village of Rykiv in the Turkivs’kyi region. Ulianov, in charge of an MGB unit, conducted an anti-OUN-UPA operation on 16 February 1945. Nikolai Romanchenko introduced Ulianov in L’vovskaia pravda as a genuine Soviet martyr. He was captured and tortured during an attempt to arrest the Banderite leader “Roman.” His colleague, Sergei Zuev, took his own life with his last bullet rather than allow the Banderites to seize him. According to the article, Ulianov’s last words after hours of painful torture were: “God damn you animals! Long live Communism!”[2149]
OUN members were still put on trial in the late Soviet period. The main purpose of such trials was to remind the population that the OUN and UPA had committed horrible crimes and did not deserve to be rehabilitated or honored. At many trials, the defendants confessed their crimes and pleaded guilty. In August 1987 for example, the trial began of a man called R. Didukh. During the trial, the defendant revealed that he had joined the OUN in 1941, when he was recruited by Ivan Stetsiv, who ordered him to execute Soviet activists. He also pleaded guilty to having tortured two young girls, killing a young man, burning an entire family to death, and massacring twenty-one Polish families, in addition to cooperating with the German police. The court sentenced Didukh to death and applied for Stetsiv’s extradition from Canada.[2150]
Soviet propaganda viewed Bandera as one of the main symbols of Ukrainian nationalism and made him the central figure of late-period Soviet anti-nationalist propaganda campaigns. Soviet Ukrainian newspapers published at least three series of articles about the Providnyk, in August 1989, October 1990, and December 1990.